Abstract
Abstract The water vapor channel of the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite GOES-8 reveals narrow (30 km wide), elongated (500–1000 km) bands that propagate southward on the eastern side of the Rocky Mountains from Colorado to Texas. Two events in which surface and wind profiler observations show that these bands are associated with leeside cold fronts are documented in detail, and several other cases are summarized. The wind profilers observe vertical motions exceeding 1 m s−1 in narrow plumes at the leading edge of the fronts, in broader zones in the upper troposphere, and in the lower stratosphere. These cause vertical displacements of up to 1 km and are responsible for the signature in water vapor images. The bands occur when the Rocky Mountains block either arctic leeside cold fronts coming from the north or northeast or Pacific cold fronts coming from the northwest. The blocking changes the frontal orientation and disrupts geostrophic thermal wind balance near the terrain-modified fron...
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